Tuesday, August 4, 2009

This'n and that'n

Finally saw "Don't Mess with the Zohan" and had to laugh at the "Going Out of Business: and "Store Closing" and "Everything Must Go!" as the names of the electronics stores. Sort of reminded me of Bend. By the way, are the furniture stores getting together and taking turns going out of business and infesting the corner of 3rd and Greenwood with signs?

Strange how whenever the media does a story about new 'entrepreneurs' they seem to pick the absolute worst; poorly planned and thought out, hopelessly doomed examples. They never seem to do a plumber or shoe salesman or an actual existing business model. Too boring. It's always some guy's dream, Hey, Martha. Let's open a store! model. Everyone will buy my amateur photos! The kind of thing that screams for a follow-up.

If you want a guess? I suspect the baby-boomers are going to be opening small businesses all over the place. The closer I get to 'retirement' age, the less worried I am about being destitute, allowing me to run my business with a bit more equanimity. My wife is even closer to that age, and the advantages of Medicaid (ummm.....Medicare) etc. Multiply that by millions of active boomers. Sorry about that.

The city of Bend is saying that they are lean and mean, but "if things pick up" they'll be stretched awfully thin. Well, ditto for my store, I suppose. Somehow I'm not worried about it. And they resolutely refuse to admit they've put Juniper into mothballs.

The article on the Traditions Golf Tournament said something along the line that 'sales' were adequate considering that their customers usually bought tickets "at the last minute" . Uh...that's a bit like asking if your blind date is good looking and getting back the answer that she has a "great personality."

It's time to get serious about my Point of Sale computer. I have a month to get it right. I'm a visual learner, yet I loathe reading manuals. But, really, that's what I should be doing. I was reading a S.F. novel last night where the protagonist is complaining about her new computer system. "Major rule," one of the other characters says. "You can never go back."

Cash for Clunkers sounds great. But why is the solution to our problems of having borrowed too much to go out and borrow some more? Driving the clunkers seems prudent to me...

"Fear and Loathing at Borders Books". At the Used Books Blog -- sorry, I don't know how to link. Nearly 500 comments from Borders employees that made me shudder. Especially since they echoed Linda's experience at the local Barnes and Nobles -- clueless general managers, back stabbing fellow employees, arbitrary and conflicting rules, etc. etc. Linda and I have it really good. Sometimes I just need a reminder.

5 comments:

RDC said...

Medicaid, don't you mean Medicare. Medicare is for over 65. Medicaid is for indigent. or is business worse then you have been saying?

Duncan McGeary said...

Hey, I've been too young to pay any attention to that!

Jason said...

I'm not sure if this'll show up correctly or not, but here goes.

This is how to create a link:

<A HREF="the address you're linking to goes here, in between the quotes"&rt;link title goes here (i.e. Used Books Blog, in this case)</A&rt;

It might be better if I showed you in person, but I'm not getting a real paycheck until the middle of the month.

Jason said...

Okay, that didn't exactly come out right, did it? (*chuckle*) I'll just show you the fun and fascinating world of links next time I'm in (but you'll have to remind me).

I promise it's easy.

RDC said...

Your 500 comments are coming from a relatively few different people. From looking at a good sized sample out of a sample of 100 entries there were only 20 different people posting and most of those came from 4 people. i would suspect that 400 out of the 500 came from less than 20 people and that you have a total participation of maybe 50 in the entire stream.